NILE To Enter Studio In June

Chad Bowar of About.com recently conducted an interview with Karl Sanders of the South Carolina-based technical death metal band NILE. An excerpt from the chat follows below.

About.com: When and how did you first become interested in Middle Eastern culture, mythology and music?

Sanders: Years ago, my friend and bandmate Pete Hammoura. His family is Lebanese, so I got a healthy dose of exposure to Middle Eastern culture. Of course I was also a fan of world history, particularly the Ancient Sumerians, Babylonians, and Egyptians. I am not at all surprised that I ended up in a band like NILE.

About.com: What's the timetable for the next NILE record?

Sanders: Pre-production is April and May, then we start recording in June at Erik Rutan's [HATE ETERNAL, MORBID ANGEL] studio in Tampa. Hopefully we will finish mixing sometime in July at Rax Trax in Chicago.

About.com: Are you far enough along to be able to divulge an album title or the direction of the record?

Sanders: Gunter Ford [NILE's manager] would have my ass if I were to give away the title this soon. As far as the musical direction, we have upped the bar on the guitar playing this time around, and are very conscious about incorporating plenty of new and interesting extraneous instrumentation.

The last two NILE records were more straightforward death metal than, say, "In Their Darkened Shrines", but that's really just where we were as a band at the time. At that time I was also perhaps a bit fed up with some of the online nay-sayers who were accusing us of "gimmickry" and saying stuff like we weren't capable of making metal without some sort of other "trickery" elements. What B.S., I know.

Every member of NILE right now can certainly play the Jesus (and Devil) out of their respective instruments. We are pretty damn confident about our technical skill level and our fever for pure metal mayhem. But that negative stuff sits in the back of your brain, entrenching itself in the most unforgiving way. I guess on some level I just wanted to lay down the hammer the old–fashioned way for awhile, at least until I stopped hearing any last remaining "NILE is nothing without its Egypt theme" internet foolishness.

About.com: Living in Greenville, South Carolina you're pretty removed from the metal scene. Do you see this as a positive or negative?

Sanders: It's got its ups and downs. On the one hand, there are few distractions here, and one can really buckle down and get some work done. But the flip-side is there aren't that many metal shows in Greenville. So to go see a real metal show — my personal brand of fun — I have to drive a couple hours to either Atlanta or Charlotte. I guess there's always a trade-off in life.

Read the entire interview from About.com.

Fan-filmed video footage of NILE's September 2, 2008 performance at Futurum in Prague, Czech Republic can be viewed below (clip uploaded by YouTube user "Anachronoux").

NILE's fifth studio album, "Ithyphallic", came out on July 17, 2007 via Nuclear Blast. Engineered by Bob Moore and produced by Neil Kernon (CANNIBAL CORPSE, NEVERMORE, DEICIDE),the CD was recorded at Sound Lab Studios in Columbia, South Carolina.